Sarah Jane Smith’s prophetic whistle

Like a lot of people, since watching School Reunion last year, I have also re-watched the closing minutes of The Hand of Fear from 1976, in which Elisabeth Sladen’s Sarah Jane Smith bids farewell to Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor. I hadn’t seen anyone else pick up on the similarities and differences between the two, filmed almost thirty years apart, so thought I would note a few of them them here:

  1. The Walk: Look at Sarah’s expression and her gait as she walks away from the Tardis both times. Somehow, heartbreakingly, Elisabeth Sladen managed to do it almost identically on both occasions.
  2. Dogs: In The Hand of Fear, Sarah encounters and talks to a dog in the street where the Tardis lands (a Golden Retriever or Labrador). In School Reunion, the Tardis dematerialises to reveal another dog, which Sarah also has a conversation with – though a rather different one!
  3. The final moments: The Hand of Fear ends on a freeze frame of Sarah sneaking a wistful look back over her shoulder, whistling a jaunty tune. In School Reunion, she heads off cheerfully to new adventures, accompanied by K-9.
    And what tune is she whistling at the end of The Hand of Fear? In fact, it is an old music hall number called “Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me A Bow-Wow“. Which is a bit mysterious in the context of the 1976 adventure. But now it seems a bit more appropriate, because she got her bow-wow in the end (indeed, strictly speaking, twice).

Actually, Elisabeth Sladen claims she can’t whistle, the tune was performed by The Hand of Fear’s director, Lennie Mayne.

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Mainly for

…but also for anyone else who had some tags on their journal used over 100 times before LJ expanded the tagged-entries-view to 1000:

has the answer. Just rebranded all my old “doctor who” entries so that the whole list now shows up. Still trying to track down a couple of other rogue tags, but the big bit of re-tagging is done.

(Explanations here, here and here.)

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Utopia liveblogging

Back in Cardiff again…

Run, Jack, run!

End of the universe…

“Humans are coming!” Say the werewolves with piercings.

Barrowman in the opening credits!

Hmm, not sure about the music.

It’s Sir Derek, talking about Utopia and bad coffee. A very cute green tentacled assistant.

The beat – Beethoven’s fifth, V for Victory,

It’s Jack, with Torchwood music in the background. And Jack is back on form. Recognises the Doctor immediately.

“Busy life, moving on!” A bit callous. But redeemed by the hug. Martha very pissed off – Rose again.

Jack has lived through from 1869!!!

“D’you just get bored of us and disappear?” Ow. The Doctor’s riposte on blogging gloriously off-target.

The hunt again. Save the victim, but cut off from the Tardis. The teeth thing is reminiscent of Survival, though much better.

A wee Scottish girrl! At the end of the world!

It’s a generation starship! “It’s not rocket science!”

The hand! The first ever flashback to The Christmas Invasion!

Poor Martha has been more freaked out in the first quarter of this episode than in the whole of the series so far.

Hermits! Hilarious!

Utopia Project – sounds a bit like Asimov’s Foundation.

“Better to live in hope.” – “Quite right too!”

The sonic screwdriver as magic wand again.

(What about the Tardis?)

Nasty snarly woman with teeth…

“Food and string and staples.” Great!

They found the Tardis, and it means something to the professor…

The sound of drums…

Martha, “Tell me about it!” Awww.

Giggling girls, very cute.

Stet radiation – very technobabble.

Mutant sabotage!

Woo, disintegrated Jake!

Poor old Jack, he’s going to get all the really crap jobs. “Well, I look good!”

“The sports car of time travel.” Hmm.

Flashback to The Parting of the Ways.

Martha hasn’t heard the end of Rose’s story before, it seems.

The professor’s got the watch!!!!!!

Martha tells the watch story, and the Doctor has never been so dismayed by anything she has ever said to him.

The professor is another Time Lord!!!

YANA – you are not alone! But who is he????

Shuts them out, let’s the werewolves in…. Doesn’t seem friendly!

The professor was the Master all along! I truly did not see that coming! Superb misdirection re Mr Saxon (or is it?)

The injured Master in the Tardis.

Regenerating… Into Mr Saxon? Oh yes it is!!!!

And he’s off, leaving them with the wild men yelling through the keyhole, as Kevin O’Higgins so memorably put it.

Loved it!

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A meme from Cork

Two of the Cork residents on my friends list (ie and ) have posted this, and I think it’s a damn good idea.

An LJ-wide group hug: If you’ve got friends who are having a really shitty week, post this and a great big huge hug to everyone who needs or wants one. If everyone does this, we can maybe cancel out the bad karma with the overwhelming good karma of everyone who wants to help out a friend.

Here’s mine:

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June Books 9) The Mabinogion

9) The Mabinogion

The collection of Welsh classic legends. The stories are not gems of perfection – internal inconsistencies and unresolved plot elements abound – but I found myself nonetheless carried along by most of them. Oddly enough the one that grabbed me most was Peredur, the story that later became that of Perceval or Parsifal, with his peculiar series of deeply symbolic adventures.

The Penguin explanatory apparatus was a bit annoying. A page at the start of each story, explaining what happened, and a long introduction (24 pages of a 300 page book) which all combined to present the Mabinogion as an object to study rather than literature to be enjoyed.

With all that editorial effort, I would also have liked some unpacking of the basic concepts of the Welsh society portrayed. There is a little of this – the translator explains the shifting meanings of arvei meaning first “weapons” but later “armour”, and marchawg which shifted from being a mere “horseman” to a full “knight”. But there were other concepts which the translator puts directly into English expecting that we will automatically understand what was meant in the original medieval Welsh: “king”, “court”, “girl”, “to sleep with”.

I’m very surprised that there is so little extant Welsh literature of that era; the Irish somehow must have preserved their manuscripts better? Or wrote things down sooner?

Top UnSuggestion for this book: Can You Keep a Secret? by Sophie Kinsella.

(Having just popped over to the LibraryThing page for the book, I am somewhat shocked by the racist comments: “Full of Welsh people with silly names.” “Too many y’s and l’s in general.” Appalling.)

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June Books 8) No Present Like Time

8) No Present Like Time, by Steph Swainston

Having enjoyed The Year of Our War, I was looking forward to Swainston’s second book; and indeed it was a good read. Here she has put more effort into world-building: the island empire of the previous book is only one of three locales, the other two being Tris, a newly discovered island off to the east, and Epsilon, a parallel dream-city into which Jant, the narrator, escapes when he has taken sufficient drugs. There is less office politics, and more high politics; the humour is a bit more sophisticated (especially the confrontation between the imperial instincts of Jant and his friends and the democrats of Tris). Good stuff.

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The answer to the previous question:

1, 6, 10, 2
5, 4, 9
8, 50, 40, 7, 60, 3
80, 11, 90, 30, 12, 20

As and worked out, it is the alphabetical order of numbers as they are spelt in English, grouped by how many letters in each word.

Of course, one can think of other versions, like French:

1
10, 6
100, 5, 2, 8, 9, 11, 7
12, 1000, 3, 20

Or German:

1, 11
8, 3, 9, 4, 5, 10, 2

Silly, I know. But it passes the time.

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Dream and quiz

I woke up at nine, and wondered why it was getting dark, and why nobody was around from the conference I was supposed to be attending; then I realised with mounting horror that I had slept an extra twelve hours, and missed the entire event.

And then I woke up for real, and found that it was still the morning, and got showered and dressed with a sense of relief, though a little wistfulness that an extra twelve hours would have been nice…

Anyway, time for another numbers quiz. What six numbers come next, and in what order?

1, 6, 10, 2
5, 4, 9
8, 50, 40, 7, 60, 3
?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?

A bit different from the last one…

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Talking to the Chief Negotiator about cult TV

I had lunch today with the Chief Negotiator. We discussed many facets of his country’s tragic history, the difficult situation in which his people now find themselves, and his government’s dissatisfaction with the current UN Special Representative tasked with finding a solution to their problem.

“Mind you,” he said, “the UN Special Representative and I do have one thing in common.”

“What’s that?” I asked. I personally get on quite well with the UN Special Representative, and am frankly dismayed that he has managed to lose the confidence of the Chief Negotiator and his people as comprehensively as he has done. It was good to hear that the Chief Negotiator did have something good to say about him.

“We are both big fans of Lost,” the Chief Negotiator replied.

I nearly choked on my food. One of those moments when you don’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

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Less ow

Went to the gym again yesterday morning, and took it a little easier – stopped doing the weight machine when it began to get too much for me, for instance. Well, that seems to have worked – feeling a little post-workout-ish this morning, but nothing like the soreness I had all day Thursday and Friday last week. So it is probably doing me some good.

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June Books 7) Science, Culture and Modern State Formation

7) Science, Culture and Modern State Formation, by Patrick Carroll

Was sent this book for review by a history of science journal, which will be my first endeavour in that field for some time.

It’s a very grand intellectual scheme, connecting the growth of science with the growth of the state, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries. In particular, the author writes of “engine science”, using scopes, meters, graphs and chambers to investigate and dominate the natural world, and links this scientific enterprise to the state’s growing control of its territory. What’s particularly interesting is that he uses Ireland as his worked example – and in particular calls attention to William Petty for his innovations in bringing science into statecraft.

I was convinced. I’m not as familiar with the field as I used to be, but I think this is a major book with some fascinating general ideas and some equally fascinating revelations about the science/state nexus in Ireland.

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June Books 6) The Awakening

6) The Awakening, by Kate Chopin

I put this onto my Blackberry as an e-book for some reason, roughtly about the same time I discovered it was the top UnSuggestion for Vernor Vinge’s Rainbow’s End.

Set in the sultry New Orleans of 1899, it is the story of Edna Pontellier’s attempt to liberate herself from a stifling conventional marriage and choose between the two men who are interested in her. I was enjoying it until quite near the end, when my eye fell on this gruesome sentence:

He had detected the latent sensuality, which unfolded under his delicate sense of her nature’s requirements like a torpid, torrid, sensitive blossom.

At this point my Serious Hat fell off, and I started wondering (and debating with my wife and brother-in-law): Can a blossom be torrid? Can a blossom be torpid? Can a thing which is torrid also be torpid? Is it actually a rather complex and obscure metaphor for oral sex?

(This then led to telling my brother-in-law about Thog’s Masterclass.)

After that I began hoping against hope that the heroine would choose one of her two potential lovers rather than kill herself a la Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary. Alas, my hopes were dashed.

Top UnSuggestion for this book: Peopleware: productive projects and teams, by Tom DeMarco. Rainbows End comes in at #13.

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June Books 5) In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

5) In the Company of Cheerful Ladies, by Alexander McCall Smith

Having enjoyed the first of these three years ago, and bounced off the second, I finally got around to this one thanks to my self-imposed reading programme.

Yes, an enjoyable book. Not a lot actually happens; by the end of the book almost everyone is pretty much back where they started, but older, wiser and perhaps even a little happier. A gentle, undemanding narrative, with some nice moments of character observation.

Top UnSuggestion for this book:

  1. How to read the Bible for all its worth : a guide to understanding the Bible by Gordon D. Fee
  2. Design patterns: elements of reusable object-oriented software by Erich Gamma
  3. Cunt: a declaration of independence by Inga Muscio
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“What I did on my Christmas holidays”, by Sally Sparrow

[This is the short story by Stephen Moffat on which last night’s episode was based. It is up on the BBC website but their formatting sucks, so I am reposting it here.]

We present Steven Moffat‘s short story – originally published in the 2006 Doctor Who Annual – upon which Blink is based.

My name is Sally Sparrow.

I am 12 years old, I have auburn hair, braces you can hardly see, a dent in my left knee from where I fell off a bicycle when I was ten, and parents. I also have a little brother called Tim. My Mum told Mrs Medford that Tim Wasn’t Planned, and you can tell because his nose isn’t straight and his hair sticks up and I can’t believe you’d do all that on purpose. Or his ears.

I am top in English, and Miss Telfer says I have an excellent vocabulary. I have sixteen friends who are mainly girls. I haven’t taken much interest in boys yet, because of the noise.

This is the story of the mysterious events that happened to me at my fat Aunt’s cottage at Christmas and what I discovered under the wallpaper of my bedroom, which caused me to raise my eyebrows with perplexity.

I was staying at my fat Aunt’s cottage because my Mum and Dad had gone on a weekend away. Tim was staying with his friend Rupert (who I don’t think was planned either because of his teeth) and I found myself once more in the spare bedroom at my Aunt’s cottage in the countryside, which is in Devon.

I love my Aunt’s cottage. From her kitchen window you can only see fields, all the way to the horizon, and it’s so quiet you can hear water dripping off a leaf from right

at the end of the garden. Sometimes, when I lie in bed, I can hear a train far away in the distance and it always fills me with a big sighing feeling, like sadness, only nice. It’s good, my bedroom at my aunt’s. Really big, with a wardrobe that rattles its hangers when you walk past it and huge yellow flowers on the wallpaper. When I was little I used to sit and stare at those flowers and when no one was looking I’d try to pick them, like they were real flowers. You can still see a little torn bit where I tried to peel one off the wall when I was three, and every time I go into the room, the first thing I do is go straight to that flower and touch it, just remembering and such. I’ve talked about it with my Dad and we think it might be Nostalgia.

It’s because of that flower and the Nostalgia that I first met the Doctor.

***

It was three days before Christmas. I’d just arrived at my fat Aunt’s house, and as usual, I’d hugged her and run straight upstairs to my room, to hang all my clothes in the rattley wardrobe. And as usual I’d gone straight to the torn yellow flower on the wall, and knelt beside it (I’m bigger now) and touched it. But this time, I did something different. I don’t know why. I heard my Aunt calling from downstairs that I shouldn’t be too long, because she’d cooked my favourite and it was on the table, and usually I’d have run straight down. Maybe it was because I knew she’d want to talk about school and sometimes you don’t want to talk about school (sorry, Miss Telfer) especially if you’ve got braces and frizzy hair and people can be a bit silly about that kind of thing, even if they’re supposed to be your friends. Maybe it was because I was thinking about being three, and how much smaller the flowers looked now.

Actually I think it was because Mary Phillips had made up a song about my hair and I was feeling a bit cross and my eyes were all stingy and blurry the way they get when you know you’re going to cry if you don’t really concentrate. Anyway, my fingers were resting right on the torn bit, and I was thinking about the song, and frizziness and such, and suddenly it was like I just didn’t care! And I started to tear the paper a little bit more! Just a tiny bit at first, I just sort of tugged it to see what would happen. And I kept going! And you know sometimes it’s like you’re in a dream – you’re doing something, but it doesn’t feel like you’re doing it, more like you’re just watching? Well, I went right on and peeled the whole flower off the wall. A whole streak of wallpaper and I just ripped it right off!

And then, oh my goodness me! I just stared!

I once read in a story about a girl who got a fright and the writer said she felt her hair stand on end. I thought that was rubbish and would look really stupid, like my brother. I thought the writer was probably making that bit up, because it couldn’t happen. But I was wrong. I could feel it happening now, starting up my neck, all cold, then all my scalp just fizzing and tingling.

And here is what was written under the wallpaper. ‘Help me, Sally Sparrow’.

I looked closer, trying to work out if it was a trick, and noticed something else. More words, written just under those ones, but still covered by the wallpaper. Well, I thought, I’d already ruined it so I had nothing to lose. As carefully as I could, I tore off another strip. Beneath the words was just a date. 24/12/85.

Twenty years ago, someone in this room, asked for my help. Eight years before I was even born!

***

‘Christmas Eve, 1985? Sorry love, I don’t really remember.’ My Aunt was frowning at me across the dinner table, trying to think.

‘Can you really try, please? It’s ever so important. Maybe you had guests, or friends staying or something? Maybe in my room.’

‘Well we always had Christmas parties, when your uncle was still alive.’

‘He is still alive, he’s living in Stoke with Neville.’

‘You could check in the shed.’

‘Why would he be in the shed, Auntie, he’s very happy with -‘

‘For the photographs.’ She was looking at me, all severe now. ‘If we had a party we always had photographs. I always keep photographs, I’ll have a look around.’

‘Thanks, Auntie!’

‘What does it matter though? Why so interested?’

I nearly told her, but I knew she’d laugh. Because really, if you think about it, there was only one explanation. Coincidence. There must have been another Sally in the family I’d never heard about, and whoever had written that on the wall twenty years ago, they hadn’t meant me, they’d meant her. They’d meant that mysterious other Sally from twenty years ago. I wondered what she

was like. I wondered where she was now, and if her hair was frizzy. And I wondered most of all why she’d been kept a dark secret all these many years. Perhaps she’d been horribly murdered for Deadly Reasons!

As I was about to go to bed, I looked hard at my Aunt – the way I do when I’m warning adults not to lie to me – and asked, ‘There was another Sally Sparrow, wasn’t there, Auntie? I’m not the first, am I?’

My Aunt looked at me really oddly for a moment. I half expected her to stagger back against the mantelpiece, all pale and clutching at her bosom, and ask in quivery tones how I had uncovered the family secret and have terrible rending sobs. But no, she just laughed and said

‘No, of course not! One Sally Sparrow is quite enough. Now off to bed with you!’

I lay in my bed but I couldn’t sleep! There had to be another Sally, there just had to be. Otherwise someone from twenty years ago was trying to talk to me from under the wallpaper and that was just stupid!

When my Aunt came in to kiss me goodnight (I always pretend to be asleep but I never am) I heard her put something on my bedside table. As soon as I heard her bedroom door close, I jumped and switched the light on! Maybe this was it! Maybe this was her dark confession – the truth about the other Sally Sparrow, and her Dreadful Fate. Sitting on my bedside table was a box. I gasped horrendously! I wondered how big a box would have to be to contain human remains! I narrowed my eyes shrewdly (and also bravely) and looked at the label on the lid (though I did think labelling murdered human remains would be a bit of an obvious mistake).

The label said ‘Photographs 1985’.

The Christmas party ones were right at the bottom, and took me ages to find. They were just the usual kind, lots of people grinning and drinking, and wearing paper hats. My fat Aunt was there, still with Uncle Hugh, and my Mum and Dad too looking all shiny and thin. And then I saw it! My eyebrows raised in perplexity again, slightly higher this time. Because standing right in the middle of one of the photographs was a man with a leather jacket and enormous ears. He was in the middle of a line of grown-ups laughing and dancing, but he was looking right at the camera and holding up a piece of paper like a sign. And on the sign it said ‘Help me, Sally Sparrow!’

I gasped in even more amazement. There was another Sally Sparrow and obviously she was taking the photograph. And probably she was a bit deaf, and you had to talk to her with paper signs, because hearing aids hadn’t been invented yet.

And then I looked at the next photograph. And that’s when everything changed. Suddenly it was like the school bell was ringing in my ears and I could feel my heart thudding in my chest so hard you could probably have seen the buttons bouncing on my pyjamas.

There was the man again, at the back of the photograph, holding up another piece of paper. And this one said ‘Look under the wallpaper again.’

As I reached for the wallpaper again my hand was shaking away like when you try to do your homework on the school bus. The next bit of writing was much longer and this is what it said.

‘This isn’t a dream, and by the way you should never try to do your homework on the school bus. I’m going to prove this is real. Think of a number, any number at all, and then get dressed, find a torch, and see what’s carved in the bark of the furthest tree in the garden.’

When people think of a number, they always think of ten, or seven or something. They never think of a really big, stupid one. So I did, I thought of a big, stupid one. Then I halved it. Then I added my age. Then I took away Tim’s age. Then I added four, just because I felt like it. And then a few minutes later, I was standing in the garden, shivering, staring at the furthest tree.

And there it was, carved like it had been there forever. No one ever thinks of the number 73. Except me. And the man who had carved the furthest tree in my Aunt’s garden twenty years ago.

I sat on my bed for ages, just shaking and wondering what to do now. But it was obvious really. I tore off the next strip of wallpaper. This time, it just said ‘Top shelf in the living room, right at the back.’

***

The top shelf was where my Aunt kept all her videos. She hardly ever watched television, never mind videos, so they were all very dusty. And right at the back, jammed half way down the gap at the back of the shelf, was a tape that looked like it had been there for a long time. And stuck on it, a post-it. It said ‘FAO Sally Sparrow’.

I slipped it into the VCR and kept the television volume really low, so as not to wake my Aunt.

And there, grinning like a loon from the television, was the man from the photographs. ‘Hello, Sally Sparrow! Any questions?’

He was sitting in my bedroom! Only the walls were bare, and there was a pair of ladders in the middle of the room, like someone was decorating. I could hear party music coming from somewhere downstairs, and I wondered if it was the party in 1985.

‘Well, come on, Sally!’ the man was saying, ‘You’ve gotta have questions. I would.’

I frowned. Not a lot of point in asking questions when the man you’re asking can’t hear them!

‘Who says I can’t hear you?’ grinned the man.

I stared! I think I probably gasped. My eyebrows were practically bursting out of the top of my head. It was ridiculous, it was impossible. I hadn’t even said that out loud.

‘No, you didn’t,’ said the man, checking on a piece of paper, ‘You just thought that.’ He glanced at the paper again. ‘Oh, and yeah, you did gasp.’

‘Who are you?’ I blurted.

‘That’s more like it, now we’re cooking. I’m the Doctor. I’m a time traveller and I’m stuck in 1985, and I need your help.’

I had so many questions racing round my head I didn’t know which one to pick.

‘How did you get stuck?’ I said.

‘Parked my time machine in your Aunt’s shed. Was just locking up, and it… well… burped.’

‘Burped??’

‘Yeah, burped. Shot forward twenty years, I hate it when that happens.’

I looked out the window to where my Aunt’s shed stood at the end of the garden. And I noticed there was something glowing at the windows. Suddenly, I was just a little bit afraid. ‘So it’s here then?’

‘Exactly. Nip out to your Aunt’s shed, you’ll find a big blue box, key still in the door. Could just stick around for twenty years and pick it up myself but I don’t want it falling into the wrong hands.’ He leaned forward to the camera, and his eyes just burned at me. ‘And I know you’re not the wrong hands, Sally Sparrow. So I want you to fly it back to me!’

I swallowed hard. This was totally freaky.

He glanced at his paper again. ‘You’ve got another question, I think.’

He was right. ‘You’re just on video tape. How can you hear me??’

He smiled. ‘Actually, I can’t. Can’t hear a thing. I just happen to know everything

you and me are gonna say in this whole conversation.’

‘How??’

‘Cos Mary Phillips made up a song about your hair.’

I could hardly breathe for all the gasping.

‘And you punched her, didn’t you, Sally Sparrow?

And then you got a punishment?’

My face was burning. How did he know all this?

I hadn’t even told my Mum and Dad.

‘You got Christmas homework. An essay about what you did over the Christmas holidays.’ He grinned. ‘And I’ve got a copy!’

And this is freakiest part of all. Because he held a copy of the actual essay I’m writing right now!!

‘I know everything you’re gonna ask when you see this tape, cos I’ve read the essay you wrote about it. That’s how I knew what to write on the wall – you’ll have to show me exactly where, by the

way – and that’s how I knew what number you were thinking of.’

‘But… but…’ I could hardly think for my mind racing. ‘How did you get a copy of my Christmas homework! I haven’t even written it yet!!’

‘Told you, I’m a time traveller. I got it in the future. From a beautiful woman on a balcony in Istanbul.’ He smiled, like it was happy memory. ‘She was some sort of spy, I think. Amazing woman! I’d just had a sword fight on the roof with two Sontarans, and she saved me from the second one. Then she gave me your Christmas homework and told me to keep it on me at all times, cos I’d need it one day.’ He grinned.

‘She was right!’

A spy, in the future, was going to have a copy of my Christmas homework? Talk about pressure!

He was looking at his watch. ‘Okay, that’s just about time up. Gonna need you to go to the time machine, and fly it here.’

‘I can’t fly a time machine. I had stabilisers on my bike till I was nine!!’

‘Sally, I absolutely know that you can do this. And do you know how?’

‘How?’

‘Because I’ve read to the end of the story.’ He laughed. ‘Also – you hear that noise?’

Coming from the television, a terrible wheezing and groaning.

‘What’s that??’

He was still grinning.

‘That’s you!’

Behind the man, a huge blue box just appeared out of thin air. I stared at it. There were words over the door and I squinted closer to read them.

I should’ve known. He looked like a policeman!

‘That’s your time machine?’

‘Yep. Like it?’

‘But who flew it there?’

You could almost get tired of that grin. ‘You did!’

The doors on the big blue box were opening. And then the most amazing thing ever. I stepped out of the box!! Me! Sally Sparrow! Another me stepped out of the time machine and waved at the camera.

‘Hello, Sally Sparrow, two hours ago!’ said the other me. ‘It’s great in there, you’re going to love it. It’s bigger on the inside!’

‘See?’ said the man. ‘Told you you could fly a time machine.’

‘Yeah, it’s easy!’ said the other Sally,

‘It homes in on his watch, anyway. You

just have to press the reset button next to the phone.’

‘Who told you that?’ I asked her.

A frown clouded her face. ‘I did,’ she said, and looked puzzled.

The man looked a little cross about that.

‘Yeah, well before you set off any more time paradoxes… Sally Sparrow!’ he gave me a Teacher look from the television. ‘Go and do your homework!’

‘Yeah!’ said the other Sally, ‘You’ve got to write the essay before you can fly the time machine. It’ll take you about two hours.’

‘That’s enough, both of you!’ said the man, ‘Got enough paradoxes going on here, without you pair having a chat!’

‘But, listen, it’s going to be great!’ said the other Sally. And she gave me the biggest, most excited smile ever.

And oh goodness! You can see my braces!

And so here I am, finishing my essay. It’s nearly two o’clock in the morning, and in a minute I’ll be fetching the shed key from the kitchen drawer and setting off across the garden on the trip of a lifetime.

A big, amazing adventure. And not my last one either, oh no! Just the first of lots and lots, for the rest of my life probably. Suddenly I don’t care what my Aunt is going to say about the torn wallpaper or what Mary Phillips thinks about my hair. I’ll go back to school after the holidays and just be nice to her, and she can make up all the songs she wants. I’ll join in, if it makes her happy.

You see, I know the best thing in the world. I know what’s coming. I asked the man one more question before the end of the tape. I asked how a beautiful woman spy in the future could have a copy of my Christmas homework.

‘Can’t you guess?’ he smiled. Not grinned, smiled. ‘Her name,’ he continued, ‘Was Sally Sparrow.’

The big blue box is waiting in the shed at the end of the garden. And I’ve finished my homework.


THE END

Written by STEVEN MOFFAT
Illustrations by MARTIN GERAGHTY

Originally published in The Doctor Who Annual 2006

Reprinted by kind permission of Panini UK Ltd, with very special thanks to Steven Moffat, Martin Geraghty, Clayton Hickman and Tom Spilsbury.

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Blink

Crumbs, that was one of the best episodes ever.

Especially for an episode that didn’t really have the Doctor in it. In Hartnell’s day, he would take a week or two off here and there and nobody would really notice. None of his successors managed to get away with it to the same extent though.

By truly bizarre coincidence, I banged in my ancient videocassette of Frontier In Space this afternoon, and in the first episode there is a 26th century newsreader played by Louis Mahoney. And there he is again this evening, playing the older version of Billy. (It would be a truly brilliant example of synchronicity if he had appeared in a Doctor Who episode first broadcast in 1969, but it was 1973. And, I see on further research, also 1975.)

Edited to add: makes a good point about 1973 as a missed opportunity for further synchronicity!

Even the great Robert Holmes had an off day now and then. But Steven Moffat is now definitely the greatest Doctor Who writer of all time. Each of his stories has been outstanding.

I say it again. That was one of the best episodes ever.

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Three Classic Who stories

Managed to get through no less than three classic Doctor Who four-parters last weekend, from 1977, 1971 and 1965. One of them I had seen when it was first broadcast; I had read the novelisation of the second; the third was completely new to me. All three are good ‘uns; though few fans will put any of them in their personal top ten, they are all pretty good.

The Face of Evil was broadcast in 1977 between two other excellent Fourth Doctor stories, The Deadly Assassin and The Robots of Death. It features the introduction of new companion Leela, played by Louise Jameson, a warrior woman of a primitive far-future clan descended from the crew of a crashed spaceship. She had a difficult act to follow, and perhaps it’s as well that we had the companionless Deadly Assassin and a month’s break to help us get over the departure of Sarah Jane Smith (and more about her in a coming post). But she really does seem right for the part from the word go, as a new kind of foil for Baker’s Doctor, a woman confident in her own culture and not afraid to engage with the new and unknown.

The story itself is good rollicking stuff: hinges on one of my least favourite devices, an untelevised earlier adventure, but that aspect is brought unashamedly into the story at the end of the first episode and done well and unapologetically. The name of the other tribe who are enemies of Leela’s people causes some amusement in this household. (I must stop playing the litany when the in-laws are visiting.)

Terror of the Autons was the first story of Jon Pertwee’s second season, broadcast exactly six years before The Face of Evil, in January 1971. Not one but three new regular characters are introduced here, Jo Grant as the new assistant, Mike Yates as the Brigadier’s second in command, and the Doctor’s legendary adversary, the Master.

I’m a bit startled to realise that the only other Delgado series I’ve seen is his last one, Frontier on Space, which I bought on video ten years ago when I was working in Bosnia. He really makes the difference between standard and classic for this story (which is otherwise a routine alien invasion plot, the least impressive of the three Auton tales). Jo, I’m afraid, annoys me as much as ever, and the Third Doctor’s inability to tell her what he really thinks is one of his least glorious moments. Some great little bits though – the deadly phone cord and the asphyxiating daffodils, and Harry Towb’s doomed McDermott, sporting the best Ulster accent ever heard on Doctor Who.

Galaxy Four was the opening story for the original third season of Doctor Who back in September 1965. No new or departing companions, just the First Doctor, Steven and Vicki landing on a doomed planet and finding themselves forced to decide whether to help the beautiful but militaristic Drahvins or the repulsive Rills with their robotic Chumbly servants. I thought it was rather good, and I say this as one who doesn’t normally like reconstructions (I will probably get hold of the narrated audio as well to compare).

There is great violence done to astrophysics in the set-up – as so often, there seems a basic confusion between the concepts of “galaxy” and “solar system”, and I can’t quite believe the idea of a planet in orbit around several suns simultaneously, which is about to be destroyed by the gravitational stresses, and nonetheless is habitable with a breathable atmosphere. But hey, this is a story where a police box with an impossibly large interior travels through time and space, so we shouldn’t complain too much.

Anyway, I thought the idea of two completely inhuman races in the story, and appearances being deceptive, made a very nice tale.

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June Books 4) Alias vol 3: The Underneath

4) Alias vol 3: The Underneath, by Brian Michael Bendis

Third in this very enjoyable series of graphic novels by Brian Michael Bendis, featuring the continuing adventures of semi-lapsed superhero Jessica Jones. Here she tracks down a missing teenage Spiderwoman, dealing with a horrible media magnate and evil drug-dealers. I find the characterisation very nicely observed – there’s a beautiful scene of Jessica in bed with on/off boyfriend, the conversation wrinkling into the sheets. Looking forward to the next one.

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The Paradise of Death and The Ghosts of N-Space

Two 1990s audio plays here, both by long-time BBC producer Barry Letts, both starring Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor (18 years after he had stopped playing the TV role) with Elisabeth Sladen and as Sarah Jane Smith and Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier.

The Paradise of Death, made in 1993, has a lot of promising elements – an alien infiltration of a London space-themed funfair, nasty kidnapper of Sarah, alien planet’s president who may or may not fully know what is going on, rebel anti-technological faction of the alien planet. Unfortunately these are all jumbled together without any real consistency of tone – one minute Sarah is in danger of a fate worse than death, the next she is happily playing virtual reality games; there is no really satisfying resolution. There are some desperately silly bits as well; apparently the Doctor can survive a long fall by softening all the bones in his body; Sarah has a deeply annoying twittish sidekick called Jeremy, and does a lot of girly sobbing. The Paradise of Death is actually less than the sum of its parts, and some of those parts are not very good.

The Ghosts of N-Space is a bit better. The Brigadier, rather implausibly, turns out to have an aged Italian relative, and the irritating Jeremy returns; but we have one of Barry Letts’ explorations of his favourite theme, the afterlife and relations between the physical and spiritual worlds. Of course, there is no continuity at all with other explorations of this theme in Doctor Who (even those written by Letts himself), but Doctor Who is entertainment, not theology. Tying the plot to a single place (the Briagdeier’s uncle’s castle) at different times in history makes for an interesting exploration of the historical cycle. And Sandra Dickinson has a small part as a gangster’s moll who sounds like she is orgasmed to death. Much more fun.

Anyway, good to hear the voice of Pertwee in his last performances in the role, and the other two leads seem to be having fun too – the Brigadier actually gets to lead a military operation in both stories. Shame about Jeremy.

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Something I don’t see every day

Coming in to the office in the middle of the morning, I saw a radiantly happy newly wed couple emerge from the lift.

Since I moved into the building in January, my fellow residents have expanded to include the permanent representation of Sweden to the EU, the mission of Norway to the EU, and the embassy of Norway to Belgium. The last of these explains the wedding party, I suppose; presumably Norwegian citizens living abroad can get married at their local embassy.

My working day is filled with bureaucrats, diplomats, and countries in crisis. It’s nice, if sadly unusual, to see people being radiantly happy in my workplace.

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Ow ow ow

Went to the gym yesterday morning. I started just over a month ago, and although my attendance was patchy (missed three weeks due to travel and illness) I felt it had done me enough good to go on to the next stage.

So they put me onto the basic weight machines, exercising the pectorals etc with repetitive lifts of (don’t laugh) 15 kg. And this morning my arms are very stiff and sore indeed. (Plus yesterday I was really wiped out by the middle of the day, never mind the end of the afternoon.)

I feel virtuous and self-righteous – I come from a religious tradition which is familiar with the concept of penance, after all. I confess I don’t feel, and haven’t been feeling, any particular physical glow as a result of my exercise regime.

And I do wish I could find somewhere that did a decent cooked breakfast between the gym and work. The various Irish pubs all seem to open only at lunchtime, and all the other cafes just do your standard two croissant, coffee and juice. I am now even considering the various hotels that lie on that route. But that is getting a little desperate (and expensive).

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June Books 3) The Elements of Style

3) The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White

This has been on my shelf for several years, and I took it down on Monday on impulse. It was a good impulse. This is a great little book, and should be read by anyone who writes for a living or in their spare time, ie pretty much anyone reading this. The one off-putting element for us on this side of the Atlantic is that it proclaims its American credentials loudly, but most of its grammar and usage points are relevant to any English idiom, and the tips on good and clear writing style are relevant to any language.

It is also beautifully written – and one suspects that the best bits came from the pen of the author of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little. For instance:

Writing is, for most, laborious and slow. The mind travels faster than the pen; consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make occasional wing shots, bringing down the bird of thought as it flashes by. A writer is a gunner, sometimes waiting in the blind for something to come in, sometimes roaming the countryside hoping to scare something up. Like other gunners, the writer must cultivate patience, working many covers to bring down one partridge.

That’s from the closing chapter on style in general. But some of the illustrations of the particular are memorable too. I remember once in a previous job sending a cross note to a colleague complaining about his use of colons: I wish I had been able to quote Strunk and White’s lucid explanation of the topic. And this illustration of how to construct a sentence badly will linger in my mind:

New York’s first commercial human-sperm bank opened Friday with semen samples from eighteen men frozen in a stainless steel tank.

As the text goes on to say, “the reader’s heart goes out to those eighteen poor fellows”!

Anyway, a tremendously useful read. I hope that I follow most of its recommendations instinctively, but it never does any harm to be reminded, to sharpen the saw as it were. I would say it’s actually of greater relevance to the general writer than the Economist Style Guide, though the latter is also essential in my own line of work.

Top UnSuggestion for this book: Judge and Jury, by James Patterson

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Books sent out

As per here, by surface mail.

(Am amused that two of them end up going three thousand miles across the Atlantic to two addresses only three miles apart in the same town. But there you go.)

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My mistake

In my pieces on Dodo Chaplet posted in April I followed WikiPedia (which I have now changed) and general fannish lore in stating that Jackie Lane was only 18 when she played the part in early 1966, having been born in 1947. In fact, the Reeltime interview with her taped in 1993 states that her date of birth was 10 July 1941, which makes her 24 at the time of filming, a year younger than Carole Ann Ford and two years older than Maureen O’Brien. This fits much better with other evidence, such as her having been offered the original part of Susan in 1963 and having started acting with Manchester Library Theater in 1960, after failing to get the role played by Rita Tushingham (born 1940) in A Taste of Honey.

I wonder how the later date crept into the received wisdom of fandom? Given that she already had five years of acting behind her, it is unlikely to have been Lane’s fault; she would have no reason to pretend that she had started acting professionally at the age of thirteen. Presumably someone early on in fannish history simply mis-copied the date from some publicity material.

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Free stuff

Sorting through the bookshelves, I’ve found a small number of books and videos that I am prepared to relinquish to the first person who asks for them.

Books I have in duplicate:
Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man
Ian Marter, Doctor Who and the Enemy of the World
China Mieville, King Rat
James Morrow, Bible Stories for Adults

Books I have no intention of finishing:
Elaine Cunningham, Daughter of the Drow
Rebecca Jenkins, Fanny Kemble: The Reluctant Celebrity

Videos where we have the DVDs:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 7

Post a comment below or email me if you are interested, otherwise I shall try eBay.

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June Books 1) Doctor Who – The Aztecs and 2) Doctor Who – Galaxy Four

1) Doctor Who – The Aztecs, by John Lucarotti
2) Doctor Who – Galaxy Four, by William Emms

Starting my month’s reading with two of the old Doctor Who novelisations, both First Doctor stories, both written up by the author of the original TV script, in both cases over twenty years after the story was first shown.

I was disappointed by Lucarotti’s novelisation of The Massacre, which stuck much more closely to his original script than the show as broadcast. Here again he has added bits and pieces which presumably were in his original concept, and I was again disappointed, but for a different reason: the narration is strangely flat, and you really miss the performances of the actors breathing life into Lucarotti’s lines back in 1964. One cannot help but feel that the production team on the whole did Lucarotti a favour by editing his material. Also he has a really annoying habit of mixing indirect speech with direct speech, which reads like a desperate attempt to make a novel out of a TV script.

Galaxy Four was the first story from the third season, shown in 1966 (odd to think of it as the Classic Who equivalent of Smith and Jones). It’s the only one from that year I haven’t yet seen/heard, but I got the novel for free yesterday with the SFX Doctor Who special and read it pretty quickly. It’s actually rather good, up there with the average Missing Adventure of the Virgin series. with Emms (who wrote nothing else for Doctor Who) letting us inside the mind of the Doctor very convincingly, and also attempting to flesh out his rather one-dimensional villain, Maaga, leader of the female Drahvin warriors. Must try and catch up with the actual series now, though I have a suspicion this may be one of the cases where the novel is better than the story.

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